Carnal Reason

I recently remarked that no religion should be beyond the reach of mockery. In a must-read post, Wretchard explains why:

What makes the Mohammed Cartoon attack on radical Islam so potent that Bin Laden himself must oppose it, is two things. First, anyone can make fun of radical Islam. Second, the Cartoons are aimed at the weakest point of the Jihad: it’s sources of authority. It is paradoxically true of all organized nihilisms that they rely upon their unquestioned authority to negate. For example, whereas Bolshevism could regard humans as expendable, dogma was sacrosanct. The real message of organized nihilism is that “everything is permitted” except to make fun of nihilism itself. Every act is lawful in radical Islam: to bomb markets, kill children, lie, cheat and steal. Everything: except to publish the Mohammed Cartoons.

I argued that the Islamic reaction to Geert Wilders converted every paintbrush, chisel and computer into a bomb. Islam has to suppress every affront to Mohammed lest Mohammed be shown to be impotent against affront. As in the pulp tales of travelers transgressing upon lost cities, death must follow the blasphemy of the local idol or the local idol, not the traveler, loses face. What Geert Wilders has done is draw a line in the intellectual sand which he invites everyone to cross. And Osama Bin Laden must on no account allow anyone else to cross for fear of what will follow: inflatable Mohammeds, Numa-numa Mohammeds, or Allah forbid, Gay Mohammeds.

Many pixels have been burned out arguing that the distributed Islamic insurgency is invincible. But what about distributed resistance? What about distributed blasphemy? How long will Osama Bin Laden’s dogma survive that?

We need more stuff like this.

Distributed blasphemy. I like the sound of that. It would be a great name for a blog.

Posted on March 20th, 2008 by pwyll
Filed under: politics, religion